Every day I see examples of bad communication. Lately I’ve been thinking about some of the things they have in common and what you can do about them. Here’s a “top 10” list, though I’m sure you can add more to it. Please do, and share.

#1 – Groupthink

With all the disasters that have resulted from bad group decisions, you’d think we would have learned that free speech is worth more than conflict avoidance. However, it is the rare organization where most people can truly speak freely.

To deal with this you have to use a good deal of emotional radar to scope out when to speak and when to shut up. My personality tends toward bluntness so I lean that way, but I also recognize that not everyone appreciates that or can deal with it. I also get scared like everyone else. So I usually give myself a pep talk in my own head before I open my mouth to speak (yes, all of these things go through my head pretty much at once):

• It can be scary to be honest but it’s more important to do things right • The customer will be better served if I’m honest, even if it’s uncomfortable to disagree with other people • It’s OK to think different, even if my opinion is unpopular • Other people are not automatically “wrong” because they don’t see things my way • Stay logical as much as possible…things tend to get heated when people disagree and if the focus is on rationality it’s easier to get to a sensible consensus • It’s OK to try a pilot test, fail, and then try something else • Try to appreciate the perspectives of the other people in the room • Set the expectation before I talk that I will be direct (e.g., “Forgive me, I’m from New York” usually does it)

#2 – Invincibility mindset

I think it must be a survival mechanism to say that “nothing can touch us,” because if we really thought about how many bad things could happen at any one time, we probably wouldn’t have the strength to go on!

Nevertheless, this kind of thinking is actually toxic to communication excellence. What you want to be saying to yourself is, we are completely and totally vulnerable all the time, any time and so must always be playing both offense and defense on the playing field.

Especially today with social media, a vulnerability mindset is critical.

There actually is no way, to my mind, that you can make people feel vulnerable when they want to think they are invincible. Generally there has to be the experience of falling on one’s face in order to wake up. It hurts, but that’s the reality.

#3 – Resistance to learning

I have this failing myself, but it’s bad. There are so many books, articles, magazines, Internet resources, classes, etc. out there that it’s simply a time-waster to reinvent the wheel by trying to figure things out for yourself every time. Yet that is what some organizations do—they want to think that their situation is so unique and demands such a specialized solution that they can’t go with something that’s tried, tested and off the shelf. But 90 times out of 100, you really can.

The answer to this one is to pursue learning yourself, and share it in very little bits with others, at just the right time, without doing it in a way that makes the recipient feel overwhelmed or antagonistic (i.e. that you’re a know-it-all).

Resistance to learning takes many different forms and has many different reasons behind it (fear of change, fear of being stupid, fear of being unable to compete against someone else who already knows what you’re trying to learn), but in a tough economy, organizations soon won’t have a choice but to get smarter about how they communicate.

The best example I can think of right now has to do with social media. It’s truly a strange situation that we have this communication tool that’s absolutely free and yet organizations totally underuse it. But most of that is due to a complicated mix of fear and inability to see the business case. Soon we’ll hit a tipping point where the business case will be obvious, the fear factors will be resolved, and everybody will start using it routinely.

#4 – Fear of feedback

This isn’t the communicators’ fear of feedback, although that is a factor—sometimes we can’t admit to ourselves that we haven’t done our best work (though most of the time, I think communicators are overcritical of themselves and others). This is the customer’s fear of feedback, and our resulting tendency to give them what they think they want, meaning stuff that makes them feel comfortable but that ultimately doesn’t serve their cause.

I don’t know how to get around this one. Either they want your counsel or they don’t; either they respond to the metrics or they refuse to. It’s sort of like the invincibility factor—often we don’t wake up until disaster hits. But as a communicator you really have a responsibility to give the customer your best counsel. You can have the discerning mind to know when they will listen and when they won’t, and bide your time till you have an opportunity to gain their trust and confidence. But you can’t just go on forever holding their hand.

#5 – Narcissism

In a nutshell, the goal of communicating is to influence somebody else’s behavior. You already know what you think and what you what to do—the point is to get them to think and do the same thing. In order to do that, you have to be very tuned in to how they perceive things, process information, look at the world, what media they use and trust, and so on. In other words, it’s about them, not just about you. Yet a lot of communicators are very focused on themselves more than the audience. Their primary filter is, “What do I want to say and how do I want to say it?” not “What does my audience want to hear and how do they want to hear it?” (And thus was born many a bad website.)

Of course I’m a total hypocrite because I basically focus on what I want to say and how I want to say it, but then again I’m not selling anything and this is a blog. If you’re in any kind of business, you really have to be thinking about the customer first when you communicate with them.

#6 – Fear of subject matter experts

I am the first one to admit that I don’t know most things. I don’t know how the human body works. I don’t know how to change a flat tire. I don’t know how airplanes stay in the air. And I don’t know how to cook at all. But one thing I do know is how to help other people communicate. And it is extremely difficult, at times, when these people are subject matter experts who resist all attempts to help them with the defense that “I’m the expert and I know what my audience wants to hear.”

The truth of the matter is, you do have to find a middle ground between pure communication and pure subject matter communication. Not only because the subject matter expert will fire you if you don’t listen, but also because they really do know the audience well. At the same time, dysfunctionality can creep in if they’re really just scared or bad at communicating, and they don’t want you to force them to change, and you are tempted to let them intimidate you into softening your stance about what good communication is. (Because then they can say that “my PR expert said this was OK to release” and mentally get themselves off the hook should the communication fail.)

All I can say on this one is, you’re never going to stop being afraid of the subject matter expert, because there is this idea flying around that technical stuff is important and communication is unimportant and easy and that communicators are stupid. Fight on nevertheless. Stand your ground unless speaking up will really have no impact.

#7 – Lying to the customer

I have never actually seen a communicator do this. What I have seen is the communicator tell the truth, and then get punished for being honest. But since the customer pays the bills, I’m just saying…don’t be swayed for any reason. Tell the customer what you honestly think, what you honestly see. You don’t have any guarantee of being rewarded for this no matter how diplomatic you are. But at least you’ll be able to look yourself in the mirror.

#8 – Metrics madness

Oh please, stop measuring quantity of press releases!!! The only thing that matters is a business result. If you can’t show anything resembling a result, then show something that gets close. If you don’t figure out a way to do this, and set aside some time to do it, somebody in management will force your hand eventually, and the metrics system will not be to your liking.

#9 – Stovepiping

It’s true that everybody’s got their own headaches to think about, but in this day and age you can’t afford to keep your head in the sand like an ostrich. (OK, I don’t know if ostriches really do that…do they?) If you see a problem speak up. Nicely.

#10 – Defeatism

I. Hate. Negativity. How can you succeed if you predict that you will fail? Shoot for the stars and you may hit Mount Everest. That isn’t so bad, is it?

Great example: The 16-year-old girl who decided to sail around the world. Is she crazy? Maybe. Are her parents nuts for letting her go? Possibly. Did she get lost in the middle of her trip because of storms? Of course. But is she a dreamer who’s also a doer, who if she survives will learn a valuable lesson about how to aim for something really big in life? You bet. And she will probably run a very profitable company of her own one day, and maybe even become President.

I saw the BP ad featuring BP CEO Tony Hayward on TV Monday. I felt angry after watching it, of course, how could I not given the scale of the disaster and the discrepancy between the image being portrayed and reality. On TV I saw images of blue water, white sand, and lots of workers. On CNN I see endless murky waves of brown and tough questions about cleanup crews who only seem to be hired for the TV cameras.

There was other stuff that bothered me too, and from a general-public perspective I can understand why, as the Wall Street Journal reported June 6, “the ad isn’t hitting the mark with consumers and crisis experts.” But from the perspective of having someone personify the BP brand, I thought Hayward did a pretty good job.

--He seemed honestly to appreciate the magnitude of what had happened.

--He seemed sorry.

--He seemed to take responsibility for paying for the cleanup.

--And though I wished for more of a sense of urgency in the message – more emotion – I could also see that he might just be tired and worn out from all of this.

In other words, I forgave him the “sin” of being a highly paid CEO who is also human.

Notre Dame Professor James O’Rourke took the opposite view. He told the Journal, “It’s very unfortunate that Tony Hayward is the face of this crisis,” because he has publicly admitted that he “wanted his life back.”

This is where things get interesting. To the professor, such admissions undermine Hayward’s ability to lead, probably because they make him seem insensitive. To me, they show transparency.

This isn’t really a blog about BP itself and what Hayward does or doesn’t know, because the facts are still emerging. The question is, assuming that Hayward did make those comments and is tired and even possibly insensitive, does that make him too publicly flawed to lead?

We saw another example this week with former White House press correspondent Helen Thomas. She was not an elected or appointed leader, but she was a leader nonetheless because her audience (her readers and the American public at large) saw her that way.

Certainly I looked up to her. For better or for worse, she represented America, and equality for women in the workforce, when she talked. Who hasn’t seen and admired her on TV, sitting in the front row of the White House press corps, peppering Presidents with tough questions? She was a feminist icon.

And with the image of the White House on her Facebook profile photo, she clearly identified herself with the institution of the American Presidency.

So it was tremendously painful, and shocking, when I saw the vicious video on Sunday (taken by a rabbi outside a Jewish cultural event, no less) where she, with deep hatred in her voice, told the rabbi that Jews should “get the hell out” of Israel and go back to “Poland and Germany,” which are obviously not our homelands but the countries where 6 million of us were brutalized, tortured, and killed in the Holocaust.

True, she is 89 and her advanced age probably led her to speak that way. True, no matter how old she is she is entitled to her opinion, even if it means that she hates me and my people. But the issue was not Helen Thomas as a person. It was Helen Thomas as a brand representative of the United States. That expression of personal bigotry was inconsistent with our American values of tolerance, diversity, and love of all people in this great melting pot. No matter what religious, ethnic, cultural, racial, or other group she would have spoken about that way, the impact was the same: people asking, “Is this what the White House, however indirectly, stands for? Is this what we put in the front row of the White House press corps? On the TV cameras?”

And so although I forgive her in my heart and admire her for her accomplishments, I felt it was my responsibility as a human being (personal, not professional, as a citizen and as a Jew) to stand up against what she had done, how she had sullied this country’s good name.

And the White House press spokesperson called her comments “offensive and reprehensible.”

She did retire, the next day.

All leaders are flawed, that much we know. And in the age of the Internet and Twitter and Facebook, that is only going to become clearer as the veil of privacy between personal and professional is constantly pulled further back. I read yesterday in a review of a book about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (also in the Wall Street Journal) that he doesn’t even believe in that line.

So going forward the question for PR specialists is not going to be, “How do we hide our leader’s flaws?”

Rather, it will be, “Are our leader’s flaws such brand killers that he or she can’t lead us in the first place?”

Always assume that the truth, the real honest to G-d truth, will always, always eventually come out. And so always ask, does that truth support your brand, have a neutral impact on it, or kill it?